Starving Student: Taco truck worth the stop for quick satisfaction

When I worked as an intern for the Chico Enterprise-Record, I tried to keep my lunches short so I could get back to the office just in case one of my sources was generous enough to return my phone call during their lunch break.

The 30-minute lunch I allotted myself was nowhere near enough time to drive all the way to a local fast food joint, suck down a delicious McGreaseball, clean the burger detritus off my lap, then hightail it back to my desk before I missed a crucial phone call.

Trust me, I tried. With the 30-minute lunch, you burn off almost as many calories as you consume by hustling around town. It made me long for the hunter-gatherer days of old, when a man could take all day to bring down a succulent gazelle and then drag it back to his cave.

Fortunately for me, there was a solution.

Tacos El Grullense, or "Mmmmm," as I called it, was a large taco truck shrewdly positioned about 300 feet from the front entrance to the E-R.

Along with every other reporter in the place, I passed the tantalizing truck every time I came and went to cover the day's business. But unlike my peers, I am a weak and broken man, so I used my self-imposed minuscule lunch break to justify visiting the taco truck nearly every day.

Having said all that, I'm proud to say that Tacos El Grullense justifies its place next to the E-R's newsroom by serving up the best burritos in this wonderful city. They're served in one size, elephantine, and come stuffed with roughly one acre of beans along with about three cows' worth of beef. Most importantly, as I kept telling myself, Grullense's $5 burritos touch at least tangentially on most of the food groups. Meat and cheese? Great protein. Cilantro? Perfect veggie. Extra-large Coke? More carbs for the day.

In the intervening pause between fevered bites, I distinctly remember grinning like a sugar-high fifth-grader. After a few weeks, I began measuring the hour by its proximity to "burrito time," which is what I called my Mexican feeding frenzy. I shamefacedly admit, here and now, that sometimes I splurged on two burritos per day, thus spending more than an hour's worth of wages on my all-consuming habit.

Fortunately, my whirlwind romance with Tacos El Grullense ended when my internship did at the end of the summer. I didn't sit in front of the truck long enough to become burrito-shaped.

Sometimes I still close my eyes and remember what it tasted like, before I stop and tell myself that that life belonged to another man.

But if you're in a hurry, take my word for it that there is no single meal in Chico that's better at smothering deadline pressure than a burrito from Tacos El Grullense. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to the office.

Tacos El Grullense

396 E. Park Ave.

Ben Mullin is the Managing Editor of Chico State University's student-run newspaper, The Orion. Every week, he has an hour's worth of minimum wage to spend at a local spot. You can reach him at bmullin@mail.csuchico.edu.